The Social Technographics Of Business Buyers

February 23rd 2009 Posted to B2B, Marketing, Social media

The first full report from our recent survey of how business technology buyers use social media is now officially on the Forrester website. Its available to all Forrester clients, but if you are not a client here are some of the highlights:

the-social-technographics-profile-of-technology-decision-makers

The big takeaway: Technology buyers are highly socially active, the most active we have seen so far. Many technology vendors have been on the leading edge of social media marketing for some time (Dell and IBM come to top of mind) and for good reason. IT buyers — both in the IT department and within the line of business are highly engaged with social media, and use blogs, discussion forums, and rich media in many technology purchase processes.

What’s really exciting however is the difference between social activity overall, and social activity for business — or as we have been calling it in the office “puppies vs. servers.” So far puppies are still far more popular than servers but its not too far off. We expected a drop, but for technology buyers personal behavior really seems to translate into business behavior. We expect that trend to only grow over time.

If you’ve been reading this blog you know this research is a cornerstone of my and Laura Ramos’ agenda for the coming year so get ready for more to come! In the meantime, you can catch up with all the details of our first report by downloading the audio and slides from our recent Webinar, or checking out the slides embedded below.

The Social Technographics® Of Business Buyers

View Comments

  • I still think there are only two addressable segments in social media: Posters and Pasters. This segmentation approach with Creators and Critcs, et al. is a ploy to...well, never mind.
  • Hey Steve, I can understand the temptation to reduce a social media segmentation down to just two categories (3 if you include inactives) but in practice we find that there are significant differences between them. Not everyone who is a critic is also a joiner, and so on.

    If you'd like to understand how the categories are defined check out slide 8 from this presentation: http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/ladder.html
  • Hey Oliver, I have seen the slide with the ladder and understand it, but for me Creators and Critics are simply two flavors of Poster. And Collectors, Joiners and Spectators are all Pasters -- pasting code, copying other people's content, forwarding to friends, etc. My point is, and I don't mean to belittle Josh and Charlene's work, that Posters are a critical marketing target, and Pasters secondary. I'm a simple man. And marketing -- especially today -- needs to be made more simple, not more complex. (PS. I once sat in an AT&T presentation that included 28 business segments for corporate business telecomm services.)
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